With the aggressive growth of battery powered portable electronics, e.g., cell phones, the demand for lower cost, lighter weight and better efficiency battery chargers is very high. Historically, linear power supplies have been employed. However, despite being low in cost, they cannot generally outperform switching mode power supplies, which have lower weight and much higher efficiency. For many applications, the Flyback converter is often chosen from among different switching mode topologies to meet this demand due to its simplicity and good efficiency.
Over the years, various integrated circuit (IC) chips have been developed and used to build constant current Flyback power supplies. For example, FIG. 1 is an illustration of a prior art secondary side controlled constant output current Flyback converter. Such a converter comprises a transformer 201 (which has three windings), a secondary side resistor 301 (which represents the copper loss of transformer 201), a primary switch 105, a current sense resistor 106, a secondary rectifier 302, an output capacitor 303, an optical coupler 202, a second current sense resistor 305, a bias resistor 304, a current limit transistor 306, and a conventional Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) control IC 104. Resistor 101 and capacitor 102 provide the initial start-up energy for IC 104. A general characterization of basic concepts of operation will be described next. Once the Flyback converter is stable, IC 104 is powered by the auxiliary winding (with Na number of turns) of transformer 201 via rectifier 103. The output current is controlled by resistor 305 and transistor 306. Transistor 306 regulates the voltage across resistor 305 to a preset voltage VBE (e.g., 0.65V). The output current, therefore, is equal to VBE divided by the resistance of resistor 305. This circuit, however, is generally undesirable at least both because VBE and the output current vary with temperature and the voltage VBE causes significant power loss.
Some known approaches for primary feedback control of constant output current switching regulators teach the use of a reflected auxiliary winding voltage or current to control the primary inductor peak current. One known deficiency of such known methods is that the output current constant control is applicable only in discontinuous conduction mode (DCM) operation, thereby limiting the power capability of the power converter. For operation in continuous conduction mode (CCM), current industry solutions almost entirely rely exclusively on the use of an optocoupler as shown in FIG. 1. Typically, they will use the auxiliary current/voltage (e.g., via diode and RC filters) to control the peak primary current. When auxiliary current (i.e., the control current) decreases, the primary current is reduced. Some known techniques use auxiliary voltage to control primary current by essentially scaling the peak current (IPEAK) as proportional to a square root of the output voltage; i.e., SQRT(VOUT).
In view of the foregoing, what is needed is a relatively low-cost and effective control methodology of regulating the primary side output current of a Flyback converter. It would be desirable if at least some of the foregoing limitations of the prior art are overcome for operation in both continuous current mode (CCM) and discontinuous mode (DCM), preferably with a minimal number of IC chips (e.g., two IC chips). It is further desirable that the need for a secondary circuit and optical coupler are eliminated, and that the output current of a Flyback converter be largely insensitive to temperature variations.
Unless otherwise indicated illustrations in the figures are not necessarily drawn to scale.